problems playing podcasts

[kinerson]

About half of the podcasts will not play on my portable mp3 player. Has anyone else experienced this? I'm not sure if there is something I can do about it.

Thanks,
Greg

[doctorthompson]

What brand/model of mp3 player? List a few episodes that have worked and a few that haven't.

[Rob]

some of the shows are videos, make sure you arent trying to play those on there.. ;)

as for the audio shows, after show 14 (i think) they were all recorded with the exact same sample rate and encoding at the same bitrate, so there should be no difference

[kinerson]

My mp3 player is built into my cell phone. It is the somewhat new "kyocera K5 slider". I brought the phone back to the store and tried a new one and had the exact same mp3's working and the same ones not working.

As far as which pod casts work and which don't, here is a few of each...

Some that work are
Ep 73
Ep 70
Ep54
Ep15

Some that don't play are
Ep 78
Ep 43
Ep 40
Ep 19

I download the pod casts by pressing "save link as" and then transfer them onto my transflash 1 gig chip that goes into my phone. I hope this helps you guys help me :)

Thanks,
Greg

[kinerson]

Oh yeah, just so you know, when I try playing a podcast that won't play my player locks up and I have to remove the battery to free it up.

Greg

[doctorthompson]

Rob: I checked the files with mpgtx-1.3.1 on a Linux box and again with mpgtx-1.3.1-10 on my iMac, they both say the files kinerson can't play are encoded as "Mpeg 2 layer 3" and the others as "Mpeg 1 layer 3". What are you using to process the audio files?

kinerson: for the time being you might be able to play them by running them through some sort of converter program first before you transfer them to your phone (anything that can "rip to MP3" should be able to handle the job)

[kinerson]

My windows media player can rip to mp3 but how would I do this if the podcasts is in mp3 format to begin with? Should I convert the podcast to something else like a .wav and then back into mp3?

Thank you very much!
Greg

[Rob]

that is quite interesting..
every show is handled the same way. all editing done in garageband, then exported to iTunes as an aiff file.
then in itunes its converted to an MP3 file.
this is what i have done since day 1 the only think i have modified is the sample rate or bitrate

[doctorthompson]

that is quite interesting..
every show is handled the same way. all editing done in garageband, then exported to iTunes as an aiff file.
then in itunes its converted to an MP3 file.
this is what i have done since day 1 the only think i have modified is the sample rate or bitrate

Strange, I wonder if iTunes is making subtle changes to the format based on level variance or something?

Kinerson: see if Windows Media Player can open the mp3 and just resave it, keeping the mp3 format, and test the new file. Might also want to check the docs & support site for the phone to see if "Mpeg 2 Layer 3" is unsupported -- it's the only anomaly I could find with the files you couldn't use, but that doesn't mean it's the cause.

[doctorthompson]

Strange, I wonder if iTunes is making subtle changes to the format based on level variance or something?


Seems I may have been close, although you'd think this would be an ideal format to support on a mobile/phone type player:

MPEG-2 audio layer 3: An extention of MPEG-1 audio layer 3 for lower sampling rates (16-24 kHz) targeting bit rates from 32-64 kbps (possibly 8-160 kbps).


From http://www.nightflight.com/foldoc-bin/foldoc.cgi?MPEG-2+audio+layer+3

[kinerson]

I think craming a mp3 player into a cell phone is pushing the envelope a bit. I'm going to call the company tomorrow and see if I can get some clarification on which mp3's the phone can play. Thanks to you both. I'll let you know what I find out.

Greg

[doctorthompson]

Very odd though, they're essentially the same format -- every other device and software package I've seen that supports either of them can also support the other.

[kinerson]

O.K. I finally was able to talk with tech support from my kyocera phone. They told me that the phone only supports .mid .imy and .pmd
At least I think that's what she said. I had a very hard time understanding her and we both got a bit frustrated.

So i guess I need to find a program that will convert these pod casts to one of these types of files. Any suggestions???

Greg

[doctorthompson]

O.K. I finally was able to talk with tech support from my kyocera phone. They told me that the phone only supports .mid .imy and .pmd


Those are ringtone formats, not music formats... she must not have understood which feature of the phone you meant.

[doctorthompson]

The kyocera-wireless.com site lists these formats for the KX5 (not sure if that's the same as yours):
mp3, aac, mp4, 3gp, 3g2, m4a, and m4b

So you could convert them to AAC using iTunes and see if they work (AAC format is usually a little smaller too, which is nice)

[Rob]

this might be worth looking at
Fonpods: Podcasts On Demand! (http://www.fonpods.com/)

its one of a few services that let you listen to podcasts over the phone.

i havent used them, but my understanding is that you call a certain number enter an ID number and it plays the episode

here is an article with more info (i havent got to read it yet)
Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Listen To Podcasts On Any Phone (http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/11/12/listen-to-podcasts-on-any-phone/)

[kinerson]

Yes the kx5 is my phone. I'm going to try converting it to aac and I'll let you know.

Thanks guys!!!

[kinerson]

Ok so I tried converting the a couple podcasts to acc format. I'm pretty sure I did it correctly because the size of the files reduced a little bit and they changed from MPEG 3 to MPEG 4. However my phone didn't even show the pod casts listed. I've spoke to the company again and they are going to download one of the cast that would not work on my phone and try it for themselves.

Greg